my valve cover looks like crap. It would probably be easier just to paint but i was wondering what else to do. I'm on a serious low budget. Can it be polished? How? What's the best way to paint it? what else besides polish or paint is there? any ideas? it's on a 97 Honda Civic HX 5 speed. it's the stock valve cover that came with it.

 

is it a VTEC?

 

WTF does that matter? I think you meant is it SOHC or DOHC.

 

FY!!!!!

 

Hey Starks until you know why i asked, why don't you shut TFU!! Hey Ponch, if you paint it, it'll chip eventually. you can bake it in the oven after you've painted it. i've heard good and bad to this. Polishing can be done but it'll take time and a whole lot of elbow grease. New ones, polished or painted might be the way to go if you got the cash to spend. check out ebay. if you choose one of the first two, go to any search engine and just type in "painting vave covers" and look at the results. You'll get all kinds of ideas on how to do this. As far as the "VTEC" question, IM me, and i'll explain more.

 

Grow some hair on ur nuts b4 u post.


Heres a DIY for it..Less then 10.00 to paint it. http://www.turbocivicsi.com/

 

if your an idiot...do what he says because im sure that the engine itself never would get hot enough to bake the paint.

mike

 

I've never painted my valve cover before and i checked out the site T3 recommended. looks way to easy. is it really. i thought if you used any old kind of paint, it would crack, chip, peel or something? i was thinking of doing the same but i was gonna use high temp paint but like it was mentioned, it goes on thick even if you use or try to use thin coats. any ides??

 

If your valve cover is the black "rough" ones, then just clean it and paint over the existing textured paint. I did my wife's car like that 3 years ago and it still looks like the day I painted it.

 

yup, that is what i did too. however my valve cover was bare metal, so I just cleaned it up with steel wool, and used high temp paint! good luck!

mike

 

If anything just clean it with some high grit sandpaper and steel wool... That's just me tho, I personally just don't like **** painted or polished... If you want it colored powdercoating will look the cleanest but then you gotta pick a color... (flat black maybe?) If you had a DOHC VTEC motor I would say get a nice new black USDM GSR valvecover... That **** looks the clean... Actually I think that I probably like it better than an ITR's red valvecover... I'm weird tho.. Good Luck

 

I primered it and sanded it down with 40 grit(i think).Then added a second coat of primer and painted it and then glosssed it.If it starts to crack just redo it.Its such a simple task.

 

I wanna paint mine too but a piece of the original black paint chipped off and I don't know if it would show if I painted over it. You can see it in the link in my sig if you wanna take a look.. Any comments\ideas?

 

Any idea on how well this would work on a vale cover that is bare metal and never been painted before?